Monday, September 07, 2015

Anti-Marxist Conscience of the Brazilian
Evangelical

A
people with no memory is not able to build a good future. So it is fundamental
to remember those who played a vital role in the formation of the anti-Marxist
conscience of Brazilian evangelicals.

Even
though many American missionaries had a significant influence in this
formation, the most important impact came from American televangelists, who had
a vastly higher reach of audiences, both evangelical and non-evangelical.

Pat Robertson in 1978

In
1978, Brazilian TV Tupi broadcast, from Monday to Friday, “The 700 Club,”
hosted by charismatic televangelist Rev. Pat Robertson, a Baptist minister who was
actively involved in anticommunist awareness efforts. His shows, which had room
for the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, where Robertson received
supernatural revelations about problems God wanted to solve in his TV viewers,
were especially known by testimonies of people impacted and transformed by God’s
move. There were testimonies of former sorcerers, former Nazis and former
communists.

“The
700 Club” touched a generation of Brazilians with anticommunist warnings and,
above all, with the transforming message of the living Gospel.

Anticommunism
had a major role in Robertson’s ministry. In “Pat Robertson: A Life and Legacy”
(Eerdmans, 2010), author David Edwin Harrell Jr. says:

“In
addition to his vehement opposition to anyone who would compromise Israel's
land claims, Robertson son despised socialism anywhere in the world, including
in Israel. During his campaign for the presidency, he told the National Press
Club: "I told one of my very good Jewish friends in Washington that I did
not think the United States taxpayers should underwrite socialist operations in
Israel which were failing in many respects.”

In 1979
the weekly show of Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart began to be
broadcast in Brazil. As Robertson, Swaggart, who was an Assemblies of God
minister, had a decisive anti-Marxist impact on Brazilian audiences, always warning
against the communist threat.

Jimmy Swaggart in the 1980s

Notwithstanding
that in the early 1980 Brazil was under military rule, which was supposed to be
more conservative, Ronald Reagan, the conservative U.S. president, was not
admired. Swaggart helped, among evangelicals, to dispel the negative image that
the Brazilian media presented of Reagan, who was, in his generation, the
greatest fighter against communism. No one in Brazil did more than Swaggart to
present Reagan as a dedicated evangelical with a political calling against the
red monster.

Besides,
there was the Open Doors Mission, with its reports about Christians suffering
in communist governments. There were the books by Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, a
Jewish Lutheran minister who suffered under the communist dictatorship in
Romania. And there were the books of Bethany House Publishers: “God’s Smuggler,”
a testimony by Brother Andrew, showing that the biggest weapon against
communism is the Bible. Another important Bethany book was “Ivan,” written by Myrna
Grant, about a young Russian soldier who was tortured and martyred in the
Soviet Union. Before his death, Ivan had several supernatural visions of Heaven
and he received visits from angels. It was a powerful anticommunist
encouragement for evangelicals in Brazil.

Pat
Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart on a large scale and U.S. missionaries on a
smaller scale were used by God to form the anti-Marxist conscience of Brazilian
evangelicals. No one in Brazil did more than them in this formation.

Brazil
is eternally indebted to U.S. televangelists and missionaries for their unselfish
dedication in the formation of the Brazilian evangelical conscience.